It's been an optimistic morning over here at Scribblista's editorial offices.

First, after what's started to feel like the eternal sunshine of the cloudless winter over here in the desert Southwest, we finally got an overcast morning. Yay! We plan to celebrate later by making some soup and possibly doing a little rain dance to benefit our parched plants.

And then we came across this inspiring news item about a hamster and a rat snake who have become roommates and best friends at a Tokyo zoo. The two met cute last October when zookeepers tried to feed the hamster (who they'd named "meal") to the snake. It's just further proof that we really should learn to trust one another more ... at least until someone gets hungry.

There are so many heartwarming stories to cheer and delight us during the holiday season, but this one is our favorite so far.

Seems that after finding a mummified cat - with whiskers still intact -- in a Utah school, the kids voted the Mummy Cat as their new mascot.

According to the news report, a handyman found the cat in the crawl space of the 116-year-old building. The science teacher was thrilled because it drove home his Egyptian studies lessons. And the kids (K-8) thought it was cooler to be known as the Mummy Cats, rather than Wolverines or Ravens. Complete details, including a worthwhile video clip and a slideshow, can be found here.

This is a story that resonates with us, because right before we first moved into our plush editorial offices, a home inspector informed us that we had a dead cat in our crawl space. Fortunately, one of our brave interns went in and removed it before any significant mummification could occur.

But should Scribblista ever need a mascot, we doubt we could do better than a Mummy Cat.

There are three more ligers in the world, which should make Napoleon Dynamite's day. The liger cubs, born in an Russian zoo, already have an older liger sister and are the result of a "genuine attachment" between a lion and a tigress. Turns out that ligers are totally different from tigons and look nothing like the drawing from Napoleon Dynamite, which Wiki suspects is really a manticore.

Got a hankering for some tech support?
Here's a guy who'll fix your computer in exchange for sexual favors. Since his "will trade IT for T&A" ad on Craigslist, he says he's been busy, busy, busy.In the meantime, bring on the hard-drive jokes...[via Boing Boing]

Scribblista's policy about snowcapped mountain peaks is simple: They're swell to look at. From a distance. Or on a postcard.

So, we've never quite figured out where our kamikaze cousin, Mountain Dewd, got this foolhardy notion that mountains were made for climbing, snowboarding, blasting down and generally flirting with disaster.

Guess it's because he's one of those x-treme sports junkies who guzzles way too much caffeine and says stuff like single-track and crampons.

Anyway, the Dewd - who claims he's too old for stunts like this nowadays - sent us
this pic of some guy on a mountain bike, then told us the super-low handle bars are latest
aerodynamic craze among fat-tire enthusiasts.